WW archive > Issue 129 - 08 February 1996

Partisan campaign shows the way forward

The Socialist Labour Party’s first election campaign was an energetic, committed and buoyant one

Letters

Communist advance; Sense of relief; Dedicated revolutionary; CPUK?

Phil Felstead is one of the ex-miners in Hemsworth who worked throughout the SLP campaign. He worked at South Kirkby colliery until it closed in 1988 and was then forced into redundancy as a result of his militant record. Lee-Anne Bates spoke to him about the SLP

The stakes are high

Scottish socialist alliance: Building a revolutionary party

Saturday’s Scottish Socialist Alliance meeting is Glasgow is an important political event. The meeting will be presented with proposals from the organisation’s Steering Group designed to deepen and extend the unity of the SSA’s constituent elements. Scargill’s initiative on the Socialist Labour Party has pushed important forces on the left in England and Wales into seriously discussing the key question of building an alternative to Blair’s ‘new’ Labour. In Scotland, however, organisations like Scottish Militant Labour, the Socialist Movement, Liberation (left wing of the Scottish National Party) and others had already established a common front. At the meeting on Saturday, comrades - including from the Communist Party of Great Britain - will move towards even closer unity in a common organisation. This is a very welcome development and the CPGB sends its best wishes to the conference for a successful and positive discussion. On the eve of Saturday’s important debate, Mary Ward - leading member of the Communist Party in Scotland - gave us her views on the way forward.

Opening up the debate

John Milligan, Lanarkshire branch secretary of the RMT, was a member of the Labour Party for many years, and left over the poll tax and different industrial issues. He is involved both in organising SLP meetings in Scotland and in the Scottish Socialist Alliance. Nick Clarke spoke to him

Anarchist arrogance

Danny Hammill reviews ‘I couldn’t paint golden angels: sixty years of commonplace life and anarchist agitation’ by Albert Meltzer (AK Press, 1996, pp386)